Fenced In
by TheAngel'sWings
Summary: One-shot, Future fic post STWAOES, totally ignoring FW and MAX. The final time Max ends up at the School, and the one thing that she finds is no longer too high a price to pay.


**A/N: This is inspired by the song 'Fences' by Paramore. It's a rewrite of a terrible song-fic I wrote a year or so ago, and I hope it's better.**

_**Fenced In**_

The first thing that hit me was the smell. Antiseptic and clinical, it felt as though it physically burned my nose: absence seemed to have made it stronger. Opening my eyes, the first thing I saw was a wall of black lines on a white background. When it focussed, it became a dog cage and a white, tiled wall. The white-coats peering in through the door looked longingly at my cage. Just mine, because this time, there weren't any other cages here with me. There hadn't been for weeks. The white-coats had made sure of that.

I noticed the clipboards they were holding later, when they started discussing and taking notes, presumably about my apathy, although I couldn't be sure at all. It was due to lack of sleep, might I add. It had been too hard to sleep since the day that the others had been taken away, without a back up plan, without me, and without any chance of being saved. The white-coats had forced me to look through the window and watch the slaughter too, having finally decided that instead of faulty methods, they would just "get on with it" and dispose of us as quickly as possible. The three that had survived the Eraser-version-X's attack – Angel, Fang and Iggy – had been incinerated. Alive.

There was still the metal embedded in the walls, too, a relic from when Angel was still in the room: the white-coats weren't taking any chances after four of them had committed suicide on her orders. Remembering Jeb's last words to me three days ago, I refused to look anywhere but my own toes. I couldn't let them know how they affected me if I wanted to get out alive, according to him.

The last three weeks had been test after test after test. Whether it was being studied for brain anomalies, or extra physiological features, or mental abilities, they had been looking for something. Until a month (or so) ago, giving up would have been the worst available option – we had to get out, make a mockery of them again. We had done it before, why not pull another stunning trick out of the hat? But now, when I looked back on it, I wanted to turn back the clock and not make the stupid decisions that had led us here, for what seemed to be the last time. The others' lives had been short and hard, and mine appeared to be going the same way. It hadn't been apparent even yesterday that I was dying – or maybe it was denial, but now I felt it. Whatever it was, whether it was cancer, lupus or radiation sickness, they had caused it. The drugs they had were supposed to stop it, but they can't cure it. Nothing could.

They don't see it, either. Their test results show that I'll die soon, but the surveillance cameras and the people crowded around the door couldn't – or wouldn't – see. We kept our walls, our strict no talking policy and our restrictions around us, and this kept them out. It stopped them from seeing us as human, and stopped us from accepting help from them when we needed it. Pride and arrogance are one thing, but sometimes they do more harm than good.

I never wanted to live my life constantly fighting, on the run. But when it was obvious that that was the way the chips had fallen, I ran with it. I went with the flow. This was probably karma. For the last however long I had left to live, I would be totally alone: as well as the flock being dead, my mum and Ella were dead (a single shot to the back of the head) and even the Voice had gone somewhere else.

The press had never helped – staying under the radar when everyone's hoping to meet you is practically impossible. The limelight we received had been like a big beacon saying, _We're here, come and get us!_

I knew I would die here, I had known it since I'd watched the others die. And the thought gave me an odd sense of satisfaction. The people who had made my life worth living weren't there, and so I didn't have to live any more. I was terrified, and yet intrigued by the thought. Still staring at my toes, I continued thinking, trying not to let any of it show on my face. It was obvious that they had tried to fence in my options. There had been a lot in the news lately – well, the last that I'd heard – about some religion where people killed themselves and others for some reason. Suicide bombers? Yes, that was it. And whilst I didn't have any way of making bombs (my heart gave a little lurch when this made me think of Gazzy and Iggy), I could definitely take some of the white-coats out. _And then, when they realise, I can die too, and save myself the long, painful death,_ my brain supplied treacherously. And so, hours of planning started, culminating in something that lacked all the usual pizazz that my plans held, and yet was still a masterpiece, if I did say so myself.

It was with a nervous anticipation that I waited for the day I had chosen. I tried to keep my face a blank, emotionless mask as the white-coat unlocked the door of my room, and walked across to my cage. It was Jeb. He unlocked the door of my cage to push food through, and that was when I sprang at him, mouthing the words, "I'm sorry." I knocked him out of the way and turned towards the door, at the three spectators. Running at them, I wondered how far I would get – I was already incredibly weak, the cancer I now had was spreading. It didn't take long to knock them unconscious, and when I was sure they wouldn't feel it, I snapped their necks, retching all the time.

Staggering onwards, I ran straight into two more white-coats and an Eraser. I didn't bother knocking them out, I just tried to kill them. With one, I succeeded almost immediately, but before I could finish the other, the Eraser leapt on me. It reminded me of something Fang had said once, when I had helped Ari to escape the School: "When you only have a few days to live, you can do anything you want, because by the time it matters, you're dead." _Well, I'm certainly proving him right,_ I thought as I felt teeth ripping into my arm, then my leg, and then my wings. In attempting to attack him, too, I accidentally caught the remaining white-coat in the side of the head. Hard. I'm fairly certain that he died.

It didn't take as long as I thought it would to die, because when I stopped retaliating to his attacks, he sliced across my neck. After that, it was a matter of minutes.

As consciousness left me, I smiled. They'd be talking about this one for years.


End file.
